State auditor

Ralph Campbell has died from lung cancer and funeral arrangements are being handled by Lightner Funeral Home in Raleigh according to WRAL.com reports this morning.

One of the state's leading political gossip columns today is reporting that State Auditor Beth Wood is under attack by anonymous cowards.

Wood was responding to questions about an anonymous tip Dome received, saying that Wood had two executive assistants babysit a child at the office during the weeks leading up to Christmas. Wood acknowledged she had the daughter of a friend in the office, but no one was asked to baby sit. She said the tip was another in a series of unfounded attacks against her.

Beth Wood, Candidate for State Auditor answers your questions, live on March 26 at 7 pm.

Move Over Moondoggie!

State Auditor Les Merritt is on his way to becoming the next surfing legend.

The State Auditor’s Office has used state resources for political purposes. Merritt’s office has surfed to the North Carolina Democratic Party website 217 times in the past six months. In the past two weeks alone, Merritt’s office visited our website five times.

As an avid surfer, Mr. Merritt can’t get enough of the Democratic wave.

Frontpaged by Anglico. Great post!

If you haven't seen this amazingly cool post by Jerimee, make sure you do. It's all about how Less Merit is spending taxpayer dollars to promote himself for State Auditor. And it's a classic!

North Carolina's Auditor needs to decide which job he prefers and resign from one of them. Merritt is the elected state Auditor and draws a full time salary of over $100,000 a year along with state benefits. He also remains involved in a personal venture as a retirement investment consultant.

Continuing with both jobs places him in a conflict of interest situation and he could be getting clients as a result of his state Auditor position.

Read the N&O editorial comment...

News and Observer
March 22, 2007
Editorial

Merritt in the moonlight

Les Merritt needs to resign. Oh, not from his elected post as state auditor, where he's been doing a good job watchdogging government. No, Merritt needs to bag his moonlighting as a retirement investment consultant, something he's been doing with his son, Dale.

First, the state auditor's position is full-time, paying over $100,000 a year, and Merritt should give it his undivided professional attention. Second, he should recognize the unseemliness of appearing to use his position as a high state official to attract private clients, whether he advertises in that fashion or not. Third, there is a potential for a conflict of interest if he ended up with a client who was a state employee. Read more...

More alarming news from the office of Les Merritt, our state auditor working on the state payroll and in his own personal business.

North Carolina has issued some 27,000 licenses on invalid social security numbers. Why is this a big problem? This means that thousands of drivers licenses accepted for identification and access in all sorts of situations can't be traced back to known US citizens and could be used for virtually any purpose and could allow holders to gain access to places they should not be allowed into, cash checks or withdraw funds illegally, etc.

In a state audit report released March 20th it has been stated that "auditors don’t know if the invalid Social Security numbers were intentionally used to obtain licenses" according to Chris Mears, a spokesman for the auditor’s office. “We’re assuming that some of those simply will be keypunch errors [by DMV clerks], but we thought that 27,000 was a big number,” Mears said.

Yeah, right. This is a pretty large blunder to simply write off to possible data entry errors. This means we could have hundreds or thousands of unscrupulous people loose in the state that have accepted means of identification that could now gain access to many places where they can do harm or proceed to arrange further means to obtain funds or illegal accounts or whatever might serve their purposes without anyone knowing it.

Read the report out today..

News and Observer
March 20, 2007
Dane Kane

27,000 licenses on invalid Social Security numbers

A state audit released today has found that North Carolina has issued roughly 27,000 drivers licenses to motorists based on invalid Social Security numbers.

State Auditor Les Merritt said the problem lies with licenses issued under an older system that the state Division of Motor Vehicles now uses. The new system, which the division began using in August, checks Social Security numbers automatically before issuing licenses. The old system did not.

Our North Carolina state auditor needs to have his own auditor. State ethics laws say public officials should not use their positions to promote their private business. This also indicates Les is working on the state payroll on taxpayer dollars and has other interests that could distract him from his state work. Way to go Les!

In the March 14, 2007 News and Observer...

News and Observer
March 14, 2007
Dan Kane, Jane Ruffin and Ryan Teague Beckwith, Staff Writers

State auditor's news release needed an auditor

State Auditor Les Merritt spends his days setting state agencies straight on how to operate within the law. But Merritt acknowledged a blind spot, ethically speaking, when a news release published Tuesday about his private business also touted his state position.